Mom’s ewes, desperate for the animal crackers I was holding

I last told you about our relaxing time in Flagstaff with my parents.  The relaxation continued when all four of us packed up and went to Vegas, staying at the very plush MGM Grand hotel.  I’d stay there again; it was close to the monorail and all of the employees were polite and helpful.  The bed was fantastic.  (Vegas pics on Flickr and Picasa)

Kiwiman and I went to see Cirque du Soleil’s “Love” show at the Mirage.  We’re Beatles fans, and the idea of seeing a CDS show set entirely to Beatles music was something we couldn’t pass up.  The show was great – though less acrobatic than I’d expected given the CDS reputation.  I’m glad I hadn’t listened to the Love album first.  I relished the pleasant surprises of the new song mixes.

Our time in Vegas wasn’t long enough, and after only two days we jetted off to San Francisco for the last bit of holiday.  We didn’t do much in the Bay Area except visit with Brent and wander idly along the waterfront.  We’ve both been there many times before and feel like we’ve “done” the tourist activities.  At this point it was just time for a break before we had to face going back to work again.

One particularly neat (and yet still relaxing) activity we did do in San Francisco was to see the movie Across the Universe – a musical describing a 1960s love story between a Brit boy (Jude) and a Yank girl (Lucy) set entirely to excellent Beatles covers.  Can you spot the theme here?  We weren’t trying to be Beatles-centric, and we’re not rabid fans, but we’d already wanted to see the movie and it wasn’t out in general release (and certainly not in New Zealand!).  We loved the movie and we’ve both been listening to the soundtrack obsessively.  I liked the way the story was written as if the characters just happened to be expressing themselves through songs we all knew and loved.  They weren’t taking the piss from the Beatles, nor were the characters (for the most part) pretending to be fictional songwriters who’d just happened to write those songs themselves for their own lives.  The framing worked very well.  Boy, could those actors sing!

We returned to NZ on last Wednesday morning at the not-as-bad-as-it-sounds 5am and went to work as usual.  I had organized a phlebotomy course for myself and several coworkers, so I had to be there…and I even managed to take a blood sample from a nervous coworker without any problems.  It’s taken me a few days to get my bearings again at work.  Tomorrow my friend Roneel will start work at my company; he’ll be doing some of Kim’s work while she’s away, and as we worked together last year on my PhD project I expect he’ll also be a great help with my proteomics work.  I can’t wait to work with him again.

I suppose I should say a bit about my thesis even though this entry is about the end of our holiday.  The thing didn’t cross my mind once while we were gone.  At work on Wednesday, the day I came back, my boss asked whether I had submitted my thesis yet…as if those three weeks while I was away were filled not with weddings and sheep and video poker but with frantic editing and citations.  I had to laugh.  I still have the same amount of work to do as I did last month with a notable exception: CSO is now going through two of my chapters (sent a few days before we departed).  I have many changes to make to all of the rest of them following my late September meetings with Placentologist.  Realistically, it will take me until the end of December to do these as well as whatever CSO requires.  I will submit in January barring any major hurdles – though, again, I’ll know more once I get the two reviewed chapters back from CSO.

This isn’t my point.  Today I signed a contract extension to keep me in my job until the end of 2009.  It’s nice to have some job security.

Let’s recap the last few days of our Tucson visit:

Sunday:

• We went to a lovely post-wedding brunch for “the out of towners” at a beautiful house in the foothills.  The sun was really hot.  We hung out with new friends and wilted in the sun.
• We have a really lovely dinner with Holly & Doug (pics from our dinner are on their blog – login required) and really got to meet their son Nate.  Dinner was scrumptious and we particularly enjoyed the company.

Monday:

• This was the day we spent seeing friends at the University of Arizona.  We each caught up with different friends for lunch, and had a lovely hand-led trip through the UA Museum of Art from our friend Robert.
• We also saw my old labmates and shared beer and onion rings at Belushi’s.
• After the onion rings we couldn’t stomach a full dinner, but relaxed at the hotel with some snacks.

Tuesday:

• After another trip to the university to see Kiwiman’s old boss, we went shopping again and found a bunch of things on our lists!
• We had a quick Starbucks break (I was hoping for an eggnog latte, but they were sadly still into pumpkin spice) and then headed to Sabino Canyon for a quick walk including the sunset (pics on Flickr, Facebook, and Picasa Web Albums).
• Finally, a big dinner with lots of our friends!  See pic links above.

We had a spectacular time in Tucson, and really enjoyed seeing people and places we love again.  Tucson was very hot and we had a hard time coping.  I managed to not exercise more than once – which disappointed me – but we had a lovely time shopping and doing the “old stuff” we used to do.

Wednesday involved driving to Flagstaff with a long stop at the outlet mall at Anthem for more shopping.  Before you get concerned, it’s not all for me!  Kiwiman has had a long list of items to get and we’re steadily plugging away at those.  Thursday and today we’ve done a few “Flagstaff things”: a nice Thai dinner, yummy homemade goulash with smoked paprika, and the ubiquitous trip to Cracker Barrel for breakfast.  We fit in a few shopping trips in the meantime.  I’m trying to keep our time pretty unstructured, not scheduling social events etc.  Kiwiman and I need to relax.

I did get another two pair of shoes:
Lately I’ve been talking to Dad about setting up a Windows Home Server for their house.  He and I both spotted a Harmony remote on special at Sam’s Club so we’re both thinking about consolidating into one of these universal remote systems.  The whole family had a play with the digital SLR cameras at Best Buy today – we each have our favorites, although mine is around US$1200!  Sigh.

I also got a Butter Bell, something I spied at dinner with Holly on Sunday night.  It’s a way to store butter on the countertop using a water seal which keeps the butter soft.  I can’t wait to use it!

That’s all for now – and I don’t expect the next week to be too exciting, really – but I’ll be sure to update the blog when things happen.

Whenever I travel I become filled with useless trivia I’d like to blog about, but I never have any time to do it.  Kiwiman is actively trying to keep me away from the computer while we’re in our hotel room even though we have great free wifi.  I find the extent of free wifi here completely amazing.  If I lived here I’d be sure to have a smartphone with wifi just to take advantage of it.

Last night I finally cobbled together a little list of what we’ve done since we got here.  You might find it boring…I’ll give it to you in bullet points so you can skip ahead:

Thursday:

• We flew to LA from Auckland.  The plane was NOT full (a rarity) and we had three seats to the two of us.  Sleep was had, but was not plentiful.  I saw “No Reservations” and “Knocked Up”.  I’d wanted to see both of them in the theaters but hadn’t managed to drag Kiwiman along…
• We proceeded on our two subsequent flights without much incident, ending up in Tucson and at the hotel by 9pm.  I got really grumpy at the inconsiderate Americans on the domestic flights, who toted their giant carry-ons (which should really be checked) and didn’t know how to move aside and let others past while doing the boarding scramble.  Aargh.
• Yum – dinner at P.F. Chang’s.
• We caught up with my friend Celine (the bride) and met her good friends Kim and Douglas.  I’ve been hearing about them for years from Celine (I think it’s mutual) so it was really nice to put faces to all those words.
• The hotel bed is WONDERFUL.

Friday:

• slept late to make up for the long flights
• went for a run, first time I’ve ever exercised while on vacation!  The 10am Tucson heat (nearing 90 °F) nearly killed me though.
• went shopping – I bought some Skechers!  Aselle and Davanea, check them out:

• went out to dinner at El Minuto with Kim and Douglas as well as Vera and Peter (two more of the bride’s friends) – the food was good, as was the company, but the margaritas sucked.

Saturday:

• Kiwiman’s birthday!  We went to Ghini’s for breakfast.  He had been craving the french toast with strawberry coulis for years.
• The bride sent us on an errand to pick up fabric from a semi-lecherous but funny old guy at Fabrics That Go.
• The bride, her awesome mother, and I went to visit Tina at her salon for hairdos – Tina did my hair for the last 3 years I was in Tucson.  She saw me through long hair, perms, color, and boy-short cuts.  We got our nails done too.
• Delivered the bride back to her house (the wedding site) and got changed, then back to help her with the final touches…then the wedding itself, and reception…everything was fantastic! (pics on Flickr)
• Gave Kiwiman his presents as delivered by Holly and Doug, to whom I had had them shipped earlier in the week
• Hosted the post-reception “after party” in our hotel suite with tons of other wedding guests, most of which were staying at the same hotel we were – up very late drinking wine and guessing how many bobby pins were in the bride’s hair as Kim pulled them all out (the bride won – there were WAY more than any of us guessed)

Kiwiman has just shown up to take me away for more shopping and a walk down 4th Ave, so I’ll finish telling you about Sunday and Monday a bit later.  Ciao!

Disgruntled Julie is passing around a meme of gifting: I’m getting something from her, so now I’m offering the same deal to you:

By the end of the calendar year, I will send a tangible, physical gift
to each of the first five people to comment here. The catch? Each
person must make the same offer on her/his blog.

Sorry, Mom and Val, you’re getting Christmas gifts from me anyway.  The rest of you – comment away, and thanks for reading!

Thesis monster
Since I wrote last, I had that second meeting with Placentologist about the latter half of my thesis (well, two of the last three chapters, actually).  I have perhaps not quite as many changes to make as in the first three chapters.  The changes I do have to make require a great deal of thought and reading to work out – I need to rethink basically every chapter discussion section.  Sigh.  Why couldn’t I just have easy changes to sentence structure?

CSO has been in touch.  I haven’t gotten chapters 2-3 to him yet, but I hope to finish rewriting them within this week.  Then I can send them off to him and we’ll see what he says back…

My new schedule is to get up at 5am like I’ve been doing, but to shower and go straight to work, aiming to be there by 6:45-7:00.  I work until 3, then try to disassociate myself and go home early to do thesis work.  So far it’s working well in theory but I’m not being too productive with thesis work.  I’m pretty tired by 3pm after whole days in the lab!  It’s 9:30pm and I’m having trouble focusing my eyes – hence the short entry.

Life as a “postdoc”
I have officially given up on the two papers I wrote/helped with THREE MONTHS ago which are still sitting on Boss’ desk.  Thankfully Kim is the first author on one of them, and she’s off on maternity leave in less than two weeks, so he’s trying to get that one out to her now.  I’ll believe it when I see it.

I’m busy, busy, busy in the lab.  I’m finishing my big experiment that’s been going on since May, although it won’t be done until at least November.  (We’re in the US for three weeks in late October-early November, so that puts quite a monkeywrench into lab plans.)  I’m also finishing Kim’s work since she’s frustrated and thinks these assays hate her.  Boss now thinks that most of our problems come from improper curve fitting.  We do radioimmunoassays and fit curves with the five-parameter logistic (5PL).  Laith and Boss wrote some kind of voodoo Excel spreadsheet with macros which will solve a 5PL curve, but it’s wonky.  I have access to GraphPad Prism which is fantastic but which is not supported by my current institution, and even though I have grant money, they won’t let me buy it *because it’s software*.  Sigh.  The IT department where I work is not even interested in supporting science; it’s all about making IT support easier.  I’m all for that, but not when it prevents me from fitting curves.  We have a site license for a piece of shit package called Origin.  I don’t even know if it can do curve fits, or 5PLs at that, but I should find out tomorrow.  Origin is NOT a great graphing program and just thinking about it makes me want to curl up in bed with my copy of Prism.

Laith left last week for his new job.  We had a whole week of drinking and dinners and lunches.  I wish people left every week…but then they’re not around the next week to brag about their awesome going-away weekend parties.  I’m organizing an afternoon tea for Kim and I’m thinking I’ll get a fancy cake from the local fancy cake shop.  Maybe it’ll even have words on it!  That’ll happen next week.

Geeking out
Strangely my geek life has been eventful.  We had our house alarm upgraded about a week ago, and with it we had a whole-house ADSL filter installed.  There were some teething problems caused by the filter being installed backwards, but they were rectified the following day.  As a consequence I had to move the home network around a bit (easy).  When I plugged the desktop back in, the power supply died, so I finally got to buy the new microATX case I’d been lusting after for the server, and the server’s old power supply (which I’d only bought a few months ago) went into the desktop.  While I was at the computer store I picked up another 400 Gb drive for the server…shhh.  Now we have about a terabyte of storage on the server.  I kick ass.

Food
There have been so many foods in the last two weeks!  Davanea had a great 30th birthday party where we played her Wii (her present to herself) all night.  I was sore the next day from the Wii Boxing!  Anyway, I made my mother’s Vegetarian Pie, which was a hit as usual.  Denise had some awesome fried biscuity thing with a wasabiish sauce on top and a piece of salmon.  I couldn’t stop eating them.  I got my fill of salmon this weekend (smoked salmon on crackers with Robert and Margaret, who always make scones when we go see them, plus salmon kebabs and the most awesome homemade risotto ever for dinner).  I think I go through phases where I crave salmon.  Maybe I’m low in my omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids.

On Saturday we got a frantic phone call from brother-in-law telling us that part of our caravan (at Waihi Beach) had broken and let water leak into the caravan for about three weeks.  We sorted out a new part on Sunday morning and had a day trip to the beach to replace the part.  There was much swearing and drilling of rivets.  We codged together 8 random nut-and-bolt sets to affix the new part, but pretty soon we’ll have to go down there again to use proper bolts.  Anyway, while at the beach we had some lovely crumbed Hoki and kumara chips for lunch, and then were so tired in the evening that we got a takeaway curry from Sage’s.  I think it will be a while before Kiwiman lets us eat out again, although I enjoyed it all immensely.  Yum, fried and fatty foods!  No wonder I’m about 15 kilos overweight.

Gripe of the week
There are two times of day when I can’t keep my eyes open: 4pm and 9pm.  I feel like an old lady.

Thesis monster
The long-awaited meeting with Placentologist finally happened yesterday.  We got through 3 of my 6 chapters (the 3 she hadn’t seen before) in 4 hours.   We have another meeting this week to go through the last 3.

The bad news: lots to do.  Naturally she was not satisfied with my introduction especially the part she works most closely with.  She suspects (as I do, actually) there are serious problems with a few results.  I have to do some more stats.  The meeting could have been more positive especially towards the end of the 4 hours.

The good news: it’s not so bad, actually.  Chapters 2 and 3 can go straight to CSO after I make Placentologist’s changes.  Plac. will send me lots of papers to help me get the introduction (Ch 1) up to scratch.

More bad news: submitting by Oct 25th (when we go to the US for a holiday) is undoable.  Plac. goes away in a week for 3 weeks and “cannot do anything while traveling”.  It will take me 3-4 weeks to finish all changes up to this point, not counting the changes I haven’t heard about yet for Ch 4-6.  I think I could submit by the end of this year if the supervisors play nicely.  It is so painful just writing that.  I started writing at the beginning of September 2006.  I have been at this for a year, and I am still not as close as I keep thinking I am.  I just looked back at a few earlier entries and realized that Placentologist had Chapters 1-3 for about a month before giving me feedback.  This thesis process is just not going well.

Life as a “postdoc”
Did 2 days of serious lab work this week which left me really tired and with a sore wrist.  There are 4 more days of this work to go (able to be done whenever I like) but I keep not wanting to do them – these are seriously draining days.

Still no progress on my two manuscripts which are on boss’ desk.  He has more time but has been working in the lab to help get things set up for my November deadline.  I can’t fault him for that, really, but I want those papers out!  Maybe getting them submitted will make me feel like I’ve accomplished something besides masquerading as a postdoc and taking what will be an entire year of employment to finish my thesis.  I feel like a fraud at work sometimes.

I am starting to feel weighed down by the many things I have to do at work.  I have been spoiled with simplicity for the last eight months, but many things are coming to a head now.  I’ll get through it, will just be busy.  No thesis writing at work this week!

Geek update
Nothing this week.  I was really pleased to see Anil Dash’s comment on my last entry (the one where I said I was getting fed up with Movable Type) – maybe Six Apart has a special Technorati filter that lets them know instantly when someone is slagging off their product.  That, or it’s government surveillance again.  I’ve started to collect thoughts for Anil and Byrne but have been too busy with my real jobs (postdoc and thesis) to worry much about MT this week.

The one thing I did get into towards the end of the week was Twittering a bit more.  I’ve started to follow others’ updates on my phone and IM while at work – that makes it easier to have a “conversation” with my Twitfriends.  Now I just need more Twitfriends!  Where are you all?

I’m enjoying a nice scrab on Facebook with Dr. Brazen Hussy, when I remember to log in and check it.  (Sorry!)

Food
After weeks of the ascetic life with no booze, I got a reward this week when I had a couple of beers at the Friday night drinks at work.  I enjoyed them, especially their novelty.  A few weeks off has done nice things for my liver.  Don’t get too used to it, liver, we’re off the sauce again starting this week.

Gripe of the week
Sometimes – and I know this is going to provoke supportive comments from my mother (thanks, Mom, but you don’t have to) – sometimes I feel like this PhD is really never going to end.  I’m pretty close to the end now but it’s become like walking up Mt Everest covered in foot-deep molasses while wearing jandals.  Sometimes I want to quit just to piss off Placentologist because she’s been such a difficult supervisor.  I already have the pay raise associated with being a postdoc, so the new title is the major driving force at the moment.  I liked to say this was “paralytically hard” when I started writing last year.  It’s the same now.  Grrrrrr.  Other postdocs, what say you?

Thesis monster
I did nothing this week.  Placentologist has my entire thesis barring the final discussion chapter which I still can’t bring myself to write quite yet.  I was simultaneously looking forward to and dreading my first meeting with her in five months, which should have happened yesterday, but she postponed it for a week and gave me only a few hours’ notice.  I wasn’t surprised – she does this all the time – just disappointed that she can’t make the time to get my thesis finished.  I gave her the hard word that I’m going to the US in around six weeks and I want to have it submitted before then.

Life as a “postdoc”
I finally had my performance review this week and it went very well.  I started writing a paper on the work I’ve been doing since May (the big experiment that I had problems with a month or two ago).  A month of lab work remains on that project, but I’m not in a huge hurry to do it and I had a week full of meetings.  The lab was also very busy with boss helping Kim with pipetting out the last series of samples for their study, so it would have been too cosy if I’d tried to join them in there.

Geeking out
This week I got my long-awaited invitation to alpha test Astra, the new version of the Trillian multiprotocol IM client I’ve been using for about 8 or 9 years.  So far it’s not too different from the old version.  I think more improvements are coming soon.  For the most part, though, everyone I know uses Gmail so I can easily chat with them from anywhere (even work) using the built-in IM client there.  Astra does have one exciting new feature – it’s now web-accessible as well, a little like Meebo.  This is a good thing as the IT staff at work have blocked Meebo (and YouTube, sigh).  I might be able to use Astra instead of Meebo at work – look for me online and you’ll know whether it’s worked.  (ETA: Astra is only webable for Yahoo!, ICQ, and MSN – and that’s pretty useless for me.  I’ll stick with Meebo and Gmail.)

I’ve been following a UK blog on Windows Home Server (WHS) called We Got Served.  It’s updated many times daily.  Today it had a lovely article on using a Digital Media Receiver (DMR) with WHS which made me again drool over the Netgear EVA-8000 Digital Entertainer, a set-top box which plays everything you can throw at it and outputs in High Definition.  I totally want one.  They’re a bit pricey at about US$399 (Newegg has it at $319) so that won’t happen soon – but that would be the final piece for our server and media setup here.  It plays YouTube videos off the web, and XviD, and…drooling.  I was even more impressed to find Jeremy Toeman’s “hands on” review of the EVA-8000 complete with three videos showing how the interface looks and works.  This is what the web is all about – I need to see the interface to evaluate the product, but I can’t go out and buy one – so I’m extremely pleased that Jeremy took the time to record himself setting up and using the system.  His videos aren’t unprofessional, either, so they’re well worth a look.

I was talking about this kind of home media solution back in July, but I didn’t know the EVA-8000 existed then.  It’s topping my list of possible DMR solutions now (as it did for the We Got Served crew too).

I did a lot of work this week on this blog.  You might have noticed the new design – it’s gotten a thumbs up from lots of people including my mother who said “it looks more like a website”.  Thanks for the compliment, Mom, but what was it before?  I’m still struggling against a few bugs with the Movable Type software that runs this blog.

During my week of blog work I left a heap of comments on the new “community documentation” site at MovableType.org.  NONE of these have shown up (and I heeded Byrne’s comment on this blog where he indicated he was using a level of editorial control to ensure that not every comment was published).  I’m still surprised that the supposedly community-based site isn’t allowing timely feedback.  It’s starting to really piss me off, and erode my faith in Six Apart and Movable Type, and I’ve begun to look for alternative blog software.  Sigh.

Foodieness
It feels like we hardly cooked this week.  We did make a a vegetable stir-fry on Monday that turned out way too spicy.  The leftovers are still sitting in the fridge as nobody is brave enough to eat them.  We ate out a couple of times, once at Zap 2, our favorite Thai place, for Aselle’s birthday.  Last night we went to one of our regular wine get-togethers where I exercised miraculous restraint and didn’t eat any of the lovely salmon or blue cheeses that were on offer – I ended up sad but proud at the same time.

I made up for this by making my yummy minestrone soup last night, and tonight another roast vegetable salad is on the cards, this time with a pretty little rack of lamb too.

Gripe of the week
I am really missing blue cheese and there was a Kikorangi blue last night at the wine get-together.  It took reserves of willpower I didn’t know I had to resist its siren call.

I’m always happy for your feedback, and hopefully the new site design makes it easy to comment – what do you think of these weekly entries?  Are they too factual and not discursive enough?  Would you prefer shorter, more frequent postings?  (I think I might finally be able to handle them again.)  Is the “Recent Comments” list on the site’s main page really chapping your hide?  I always love to hear anything you have to say.

Mom, your comment about the pantry labels didn’t make it through the blogassacre.  Sorry!  (No worries, Mom, your comment is still there.)  Oh yeah, and everyone’s permalinks to my old entry names won’t work.  It’s all much better in the long term…on the plus side, the site should be nicer (even if it looks weirder)
as a result of the changes.  I’ll be playing with the format soon.  I
just want Six Apart to standardize on a release version of Movable
Type, honestly!

Welcome to the entries I wrote on Monday morning!  I did actually blog on time, I swear.